• Question: can humans ever live on mars? How?

    Asked by to Aled, Ellie, Kev, Willem on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Willem Heijltjes

      Willem Heijltjes answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      In theory – yes! But it’s not easy! The place on earth that is the most like mars is a desert on the south pole: very cold and very dry! And on mars, you can’t breathe!

      But the biggest problem is water. We don’t yet know how much water there is on mars, and if there isn’t enough, we need to bring it all from earth!

      Then we will need to grow plants – so we don’t have to bring all our food and oxygen as well. We will have to build big greenhouses, and let none of the oxygen (that the plants make) escape…

      So as you can see, for now, it’s a lot easier to just stay here 😉

    • Photo: Aled Roberts

      Aled Roberts answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Hey Violetroses!

      Another thing to consider is the difference in gravity… this will affect us in the long term (and it will affect the plants). We and plants have evolved to our gravity on earth and the gravity on mars is much lower. Who knows what internal systems may be affected by microgravity…

      We are starting to get a bit of an idea from experiments on the international space station which is quite cool! Some experiments are recently looking at how bacteria cope with lower gravity because don’t forget… if we are going to mars… they are coming with us!

      Hope that helps! 🙂 Don’t forget to vote 🙂

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